'Splaining Away Mr. A

[Connor Fallon]

Oh man, that was some nice alliteration.

Anyway, I just wanted to say -- one of the things that amazed me about this ARG was that, at a certain point, I believe Mr. A could have said anything and you guys would have found some way to justify it. I'm pretty sure some of the things Mr. A did in this game were super questionable =P

I mean, the guy is canonically pretty awful. I remember early on we were terrified you all would straight up abandon him the moment the Cabal showed up, before we were ready with the second faction, which prompted the AMA. I'm just curious what brought some of you so firmly into the territory of explaining everything he does =)

[eli_gone_crazy]

uh, for my part. I was trying to get as much information out of A as possible.
(longest plan ever )
so, it became about trying to stay on A's good side.
You should have seen some of the PM's between me and others, ranting about A and his....lack of tact.

[Tom]

I guess this is a good time to note that those of us who played the Cabal most often (Dana, Connor) and those of us who played Mr. A more often (...me) sometimes took different interpretations of the characters.

Although I might describe a given instantiation of Mr. A as a lovable dickhead, I don't necessarily think he's bad or evil. He did lie about that big thing, though. I dunno. It's complicated.

Maybe one of the reasons grey & gray worked so well here is that we legit started debating the positions at some point.

[Connor Fallon]

I guess this is a good time to note that those of us who played the Cabal most often (Dana, Connor) and those of us who played Mr. A more often (...me) sometimes took different interpretations of the characters.

Although I might describe a given instantiation of Mr. A as a lovable dickhead, I don't necessarily think he's bad or evil. He did lie about that big thing, though. I dunno. It's complicated.

Maybe one of the reasons grey & gray worked so well here is that we legit started debating the positions at some point.

Yes, this was a very interesting development among the staff. I'd get in arguments with Alex Moser about whether the Cabal should be sent back all the time.

You could tell Waka leaned Cabal. That's because I (and Dana) firmly leaned Cabal =P

[Tom]

I once worked on a post-apocalyptic script where it was supposed to be ambiguous whether the nuclear apocalypse had happened due to human error, or an alien invasion. I believed it was error, my co-writer believed we'd launched nukes at aliens. Each of us policed the script and made sure it was consistent with both interpretations.

It's always fun when that sort of thing works out.

[Sicon112]

I just liked A because I could understand how he thought. Take out the eldritch bit and our minds work in a similar manner, so... XD

[Jeroic9]

A is interesting, and was plainly speaking from a position of superior power and knowledge. After a while- and I said this in the chat- it became a matter of math. If he was right and we didn't go along with his/their plan, then everything goes kabloom.

[Blurred_9L]

He was mostly our primary source of information. But yeah, sometimes it got annoying with him witholding information and whatnot... though I guess, at least for me, I let it pass, since he isn't exactly human to being with... also, I tried to not be against any of the characters...

[Adell]

I was always an advocate against trusting him, but some of his instantiations were funny enough to make him somewhat endearing. I do think that a big part of everyone following and justifying his actions was because for a really long time he was the only perspective people were getting on the whole situation, and his fear gambit of "do things my way or we may all die" was enough for a lot of players to follow whatever he wanted.

[Sicon112]

I was always an advocate against trusting him, but some of his instantiations were funny enough to make him somewhat endearing. I do think that a big part of everyone following and justifying his actions was because for a really long time he was the only perspective people were getting on the whole situation, and his fear gambit of "do things my way or we may all die" was enough for a lot of players to follow whatever he wanted.

Actually, it really amounted to less of a fear gambit that it was a logical risk analysis. It could be taken as either way, which just means he has multilayered plans which means I like him more. XD

Anyhow, I made it clear I was just supporting the logical viewpoint, and even then when I realized how much this was getting debated I just removed myself to the sidelines to act as a consultant to everyone who asked for my help.

[Rick Healey]

Personally, I leaned towards Mr. A, but mostly because I felt the Cabal was a bit too self-serving. Though, to be fair, some more than others - I actually felt for Don Juan, and he was the one I felt was most in a position to be redeemed (and, relatedly, most deserved to stay).

Though the people who ended up doing more work with certain characters favoring those sides is certainly true. Despite actually voicing Erik, I did more work looking over Mr. A stuff simply because there was more Mr. A stuff. So I favored him. Or, perhaps more appropriately, I was pro-instantation. Administrator Prime was much less positive, in my eyes.

[Val Reznitskaya]

I suppose it didn't help that we were using Mr. A to confirm official ARG content. I think I was always leaning more towards the Cabal, but that was probably because I knew what was really going on. I often wonder who I'd have supported had I been a player, though I doubt I will ever have an answer to that question.

[narrativedilettante]

I'm just a huge fan of Mr. Administrator as a character and I wanted to be on his side and give him the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. He's so alien and bizarre and I love him, even/especially when he's being a complete donkeyhole.

[Dryunya]

Mr. A just appeals to me. Maybe it's because I like mysterious and logical characters, and he (usually) happens to be both. And I, just like Sicon, sided with him because of risk evaluation. When an ominous infinite entity tells you that there is a problem with the universe (which was obvious), and everyone will die if it's not fixed, it's wise to listen. In the end, I got played (which was hardly surprising, given all our WMGs), but that's still better than if I ignored him, and he turned out to be right. That couldn't happen, of course, but we're playing as if the game is real, right?

(I had a related thought now: what if some other universe was threatened? In that case the apocalyptic scenario could be possible. While it would classify as You Bastard at most, that would still be better than an apocalypse everyone knows won't happen.)

[Scarab]

You know I've definitely noticed this amongst fiction- a character can be the biggest asshole you have ever encoutnered, and people will still love him/her because they're just so INTERESTING, sometimes more interesting than the good guys, in fact.

There's also the fact that wmany of us basically ran with the diea that we were usually talking to Instantations, rather than prime - some of them were a lot more open, even close to friendly, hence the sequel hook... aaand of course a lot of them were probably terminated for being too individual. So Mister A is still a jerk, but he's an intriguing jerk.

[Pixelmage]

I suppose it didn't help that we were using Mr. A to confirm official ARG content. I think I was always leaning more towards the Cabal, but that was probably because I knew what was really going on. I often wonder who I'd have supported had I been a player, though I doubt I will ever have an answer to that question.

You know... This is the only thing that I believe to have prevented the split into factions. Even with a small playerbase, if we had two playmakers to chose from, that were on the same level, we probably would have split efforts... Or played both sides, most likely.
I mentioned early on that if the Cat decided to raise a banner I would personally follow him. But, we only had Mr. A. He was the only established canon holder while in-game... The Cabal made an statement, we still had to go ask Mr. A if it's true or not!
We never really had final confirmation for anything big coming from any other source. Save for meta instances like Dana confirming rEALITY eNDS wasn't a GM.

[Jeroic9]

I feel, and this is just me, that if there was an early thing where Mr. A was outright proven wrong on some important point, or caught in a major outright lie earlier, then we might have been a bit less faithful to the character's word. After all, we had no reason to believe he wasn't right. It was his word against the Cabal's, and while A is definitely creepy he hadn't (to our knowledge) sent hundreds of threatening letters to someone.

[Dana]

To be fair, the Cabal only sent 97 threatening letters. Not hundreds.

[Jeroic9]

To be fair, the Cabal only sent 97 threatening letters. Not hundreds.

Well 3 is a mythically important number, to boot. But all the same, coming from watching EC, I had the idea of A as someone to be suspicious of but who wasn't outright villainous. Meanwhile my first impressions of the Cabal were "villain here." I'm very big on first impressions.

Plus- and I consider this a good thing in my way- I had no idea how ARG exposition worked, who or what was supposed to be taken as subjective or suspicious or whatever. So I just assumed first contact "quest-giver" was to stay that way until some large event said otherwise.

[Tom]

You were supposed to come away with that understanding of the Cabal on their first impression. They were supposed to gradually become more gray and more sympathetic and it was supposed to HURT.

Mr. A as canon-delivery-cannon was necessary because of various attempts to gamejack, some serious, some not. Since he was the first person we introduced, and he delivered the Call to Action, it seemed appropriate. I would have liked for him to be ambiguous earlier, but we had to trim the ambiguity a bit in earlier installments so that players would know what was real.

That said, anyone could have watched Echo Chamber and discovered that he lies. And many of you did.

I personally believe people liked him simply because he was fun.

[Connor Fallon]

It is true that Mr. A was more 'fun' than the Cabal. The Cabal had like... serious motivations and hopes and dreams and stuff. Mr. A just yelled at things.

I guess next time we need to include a comic relief character in our moody faction. I don't think Morgan made a single joke.

[Tom]

We never really had final confirmation for anything big coming from any other source. Save for meta instances like Dana confirming rEALITY eNDS wasn't a GM.

I've always wanted to tell you guys to be less hard on rEALITY eNDS. I wish their puzzles were remembered fondly, cause frankly, they were really cool. They were a distraction, but they wouldn't have been such a distraction if they hadn't given you fun stuff to do.

We didn't just chase them off. They stuck around. I won't tell you if they became a player or a GM, but they were with the game to its end.

Please respect that I can't say anything more about this out of concerns for privacy. And please don't guess, or go on a witch hunt, either.

[Dana]

It is true that Mr. A was more 'fun' than the Cabal. The Cabal had like... serious motivations and hopes and dreams and stuff. Mr. A just yelled at things.

I guess next time we need to include a comic relief character in our moody faction. I don't think Morgan made a single joke.

"Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Morgan. Please don't send me back."

[Sicon112]

We never really had final confirmation for anything big coming from any other source. Save for meta instances like Dana confirming rEALITY eNDS wasn't a GM.

I've always wanted to tell you guys to be less hard on rEALITY eNDS. I wish their puzzles were remembered fondly, cause frankly, they were really cool. They were a distraction, but they wouldn't have been such a distraction if they hadn't given you fun stuff to do.

We didn't just chase them off. They stuck around. I won't tell you if they became a player or a GM, but they were with the game to its end.

Please respect that I can't say anything more about this out of concerns for privacy. And please don't guess, or go on a witch hunt, either.

To be honest, I was quite impressed with some of their material. I was a lurker then, though, so I never commented. Aaaaand now I'm really curious as to who they are, though. XD

[Tom]

I expect you to be curious. How could you not be?

But do try to respect their decision, and just leave it as one of the game's unresolved mysteries.